The Pirate Captain (71 page)

“England?”

A vague nod was his answer.

“Pryce said you were conceived in a tempest and born in a maelstrom.”

Nathan grinned crookedly, the asymmetrical bells in his mustache drawing nearly level, as he did whenever he was self-conscious. “Good story, isn’t it?”

“And the real story?”

He gave her an amber and cinnamon look as he considered how much to tell.

“Mum was Black Celt, but born in England; some said she had the way of the Ancient Ones about her, as did her mother before her. Her father was a merchant; imports from the Indies and thereabouts. When she was seventeen, he took her on a purchasing trip to see the world. She met me father then.”

“He was a pirate?”

“No.” Nathan was amused by the thought. He popped a piece of meat in his mouth, licking the juices from between his fingers. “A seaman, though. By the time they returned to England, she was with child and her family disowned her. Me father lingered long enough to see me born, and then was aweigh.”

“Didn’t he ever come back?”

“Oh, aye,” he said with a half-smile around the mouthful. “Three visits, three proofs.”

“Did they marry?” Cate regretted the question as soon as she asked. The shortcomings of a parent were rarely an easy thing for a child to admit, no matter the age.

“No.” Nathan took no such umbrage. “Once—when I did inquire—she just said something about ‘finally home’ and that was all,” he said, resigned to the vagaries of a sailor’s lifestyle.

He fed Cate another bite of meat and bread, wiping his fingers on his pant leg.

“You have brothers and sisters? You’ve never made mention,” she said.

“Aye, two brothers and a sister. Nothing to be gained in making mention; I haven’t seen either of the boys for years, and me sister died near twenty years ago.”

A shadow crossed his face as he chewed. The shoulders of his shirt were darkened by his wet hair. The neck gapped open to reveal the banner emblazoned with “Freedom” over his heart.

“Father left money, the few times he came, but there was never enough, and what with four bastards, Mum’s family wouldn’t help her…” Nathan fondled a bit of bread, the corner of his mouth tucked up in disgust. At length, he shook himself free of that line of thought.

“Finally, she obtained a position as a chambermaid on an estate in the country. Lord Horatio Sidwell,” he announced grandly. “Life was good there: plenty to eat, warm beds, and lots of country to play in.” He smiled, his distant gaze growing soft. “Mum actually laughed during that time.”

Pulling the cork, he helped Cate to a drink from the bottle. It was filled with yesterday’s rum punch. Compared to the heat of the day and the pool, it was refreshingly cool. As delicious as before, time had allowed the flavors to mellow further, the fruitiness overshadowing the spices.

“One day, Mum suddenly announced that we were leaving,” he said, popping the cork back into place. “I think there was a falling out of some kind, between Mum and Lady Sidwell. I recall a lot of shouting. Indiscretions, as it were. Unfounded poppycock really, but we left, nonetheless. She had enough money to buy us all passage to the Indies, in search of me father.

“I loved it!” Nathan hunched forward, his long toes curling with excitement. “The ship, the sea; something had always called, I just hadn’t known what. Mum said the Old Ones told her I was born for it. Rather figured, I thought,” he added dryly, “seein’s how me sire was a sailor, but she put great store in it.”

Cate forbore asking what his mother had meant by “Old Ones.” Living in the Highland, a land of isolation and strong superstitions, “old ones” came in spirit and living forms, often a fine line separating the two.

“Oh! Umm…a little…something…!” Nathan rummaged in the bag and brought out a small piece of lightweight canvas. Unfolding it, he drew out a length of knotted cord. Cate inwardly groaned, dreading another knot lesson. Surely not now!

“Wrist, if you please,” he said.

He waited as she worked a hand free. Jelly-limbed as she was, finding her hand was almost too much to ask, let alone move it. Ultimately she produced one, the left, as it turned out. He passed the bracelet around, his fingers brushing the underside’s tender skin as he affixed it with an intricate knot. It was identical to her necklace, except the ends were long, and adorned with bits of shell, beads and tiny silver medallions.

“But why…? She asked, fingering it.

He rubbed his finger thoughtfully along the side of his nose and finally said, “The
Morganse
desired you to have it.”

There was no part of that which she believed, and yet couldn’t find the words to point that out.

“Somehow, I think Mum thought she would find him, somehow,” Nathan said, resuming his story, a obvious effort to change the subject. “What little money we had ran out quickly. She started taking odd jobs, taverns and laundry and such, while I took to fishing or stealing, whichever came first, to help keep us fed.”

He drew his fingers meditatively along the drooping curve of his mustache, his eyes darkening. “Eventually, Mum took to whoring. It paid better than the other work,” he said pragmatically, “’though I don’t think it was any easier on her. I was left to watch the little ones.”

He helped Cate to another drink, took a long one of his own, and then stretched out next to her. Cradling his head in his linked hands, he exhaled deeply several times and rocking in languid contentment. As he gazed up into the trees, his chin was lifted enough to reveal the jagged scar at his throat.

“I was too young to really know what was going on, but I knew enough to know it wasn’t right,” he said the branches overhead. “I could see it in Mum’s eyes; hear it in her voice, when she’d ask me to take the younguns away for a bit. One night, I came back early, caught some drunken bastard beating her. Ran him through the leg with his own sword, I did. Then he started after me.”

“Did he beat you?” Cate gaped.

Nathan lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “Nah, he was too drunk; between Mum and me, we chased him off.” He sobered. His mouth pressed into a grim line. “Other times, I wasn’t there; I’d come home in time to help wash the blood from her face.”

Her heart pinched at the desperate picture he painted. “Did she ever find your father?”

“No,” he said, with a distant look that revealed his mother hadn’t suffered that failure alone. “Heard about him a few times over the years, but she never found him.

“Sometime along about then,” Nathan said, brightening, “she met up with a man named Beecher; a customer he was, I think…originally.”

A walnut eye peered over his arm and narrowed. “Now there was a pirate. Buggering, old, spawn o’ the devil, he was.” He swore. “He took a special liking to Mum; took us all in, found us a decent place to live—better than the shack, as I recall, at any rate.”

“How old were you then?”

“Umm, eleven or twelve.” Nathan shifted, arranging himself more comfortably. “Beecher took us all in—treated us like we were his own—and was good to Mum. I should have been more grateful.”

“Except?” she asked, picking up the lilt in his voice.

His shoulder twitched as he avoided her gaze. “Except, I took exception to him; thought he was trying to be me father. Since I already had one…” His throat moved as he swallowed. “Then one day, Beecher announced he was taking us all away. Seemed like a great adventure, at the time. I always wanted to go to sea, again; I’d loved the trip from England so much, I couldn’t wait for the next time.”

“Except?”

A smile quirked a corner of his mouth, pleased by her quickness.

“The bile-laden, old blighter decided to make an example of me. Granted, I was wild and filled with rebellion, by then,” he conceded reluctantly. “He tried to bring me some discipline; a few times it caused arguments between him and Mum. The other two boys were too young to remember Father, and took to Beecher, but not me; I was determined that the scabrous bastard wasn’t going to replace him. Maybe he thought that seein’s how I wanted to go to sea, he’d teach me a lesson, or something, I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head, as if still baffled. “He made the trip every kind of hell imaginable.”

“Did you learn anything?”

A large flock of orange and yellow parrots flying over, chattering and squawking momentarily distracted him.

“About ships and sailing, everything, aye. About Beecher?” Nathan asked, angling his head toward her, pursing his lips. “Just that I didn’t want to be around him, the old barracuda. Then, we finally arrived at Matelotage Isle.”

“Where?”

“Matelotage Isle,” he repeated, each syllable with a hiss of disgust. Too agitated to be still, he sat up, bits of moss and twigs clinging to the damp linen of his shirt. “A delicate sounding name for the damnedest, most godforsaken, wretched place me young eyes had ever seen.”

With a derisive snort, he shook his head in dismay. “A place that’s on the way to everywhere, but near to nothing. But, ah!” Nathan said displaying a warning finger, “you’ll not find it on any map. It’s a place where pirates go, when nowhere else will have them.”

He reached for the bottle and took a drink.

Cate struggled to imagine the place he described. “A pirate penal colony?”

“Hardly, but of sorts,” he said, setting the cork with his palm. “There’s the ones what are too tired, but not so tired as to die. And there’s the ones what are too lowly and vile to be had anywhere else, including hell.”

“Sounds rather hellish.”

“An understatement, to be sure. Such a place would need someone from the right hand of Satan to rule it, and that would be none other than Beecher.”

“And that’s where he took you?”

“Like he was delivering us to the Garden of Eden,” he said grimly.

“I thought I heard once of a place something like that near Africa.”

“Madagascar? A pirate haven to be sure. Ranter Bay, Fort Dauphin, and Isle Sainte Marie; Baldridge, Welsh, Samuel, and Plantain had their share of running it, Ol’ Avery and Tew sailed out of it, but that was nigh a half century ago.”

A hand clenched a fist on his leg. “I hated that place,” he rasped, with a soul-felt vehemence. “Every variety of degradation you could imagine was there, and hell-hound Beecher was the Master of it all.”

Nathan’s eyes closed as he fought to quell the memories. When they opened again, he cautiously glanced sideways to see if she were looking. A blush rose from the collar of his shirt as he averted his gaze overhead.

“Shortly after we arrived, Beecher announced he was going on a venture and I was to go with him. I begged Mum to allow me stay, but she insisted, sayin’ as it would be good for me, a chance to meet me calling and go to sea under the guidance of an expert.” He heaved a long sigh and added, grimly: “Took me first
and
second flogging on that voyage.”

“He flogged you?”

He gave a rueful smile as he stretched out on the grass once again, one knee bent. “Became a bit recalcitrant I did, I expect. He had to make an example of me, and he did. I swear, he enjoyed every stroke of it. First time, it was two strokes—just with the lash—and second time, it was five with the cat. Bloody unpleasant on a scrawny, bony back. Taught me I never wanted to be a pirate, that’s for bloody damned sure. I hated every one of those men with a passion what penetrated clear to me bones.”

“Where’s your mother now?”

“Dead.” The answer was blunt, but laden with loss. “Shortly after we returned, she died in childbed with Beecher’s. I remember crouching in the corner, hiding behind a chair, listening to her scream. There was so much blood.” His eyes clamped shut as he bit his lower lip. “I hated him even the more. Shortly after, I left, stowed away; swearing I’d never go back to that hellhole and never to sink as low,” he added vehemently.

An awkward silence fell between them as the irony and tragedy of that twisted in the air. She sought in vain for something to say that wouldn’t sound like hollow platitudes.

Unable to witness his pain any further, Cate swallowed hard and asked, “Then what?”

“I stowed away on a merchant, and I’ve been at sea ever since,” Nathan finished lightly, as if announcing the “happily ever after” ending to a child’s story.

“Have you ever seen your father?” As contentious as her relationship had been with her father, she still couldn’t imagine never having one.

Re-crossing his ankles, he resituated his head on his hands.

“No, never have. Not bloody likely, either. The sea claims many a soul and no one the wiser. Maybe I’ll run into him in the hereafter, whatever that is,” he finished on a slightly brighter note.

“And your brothers?”

“Charles and Michael?” His jaw twisted sideways as he considered. “Last time I saw them, they were standing at the end of the wharf at Matelotage, waving good-bye.”

Having said more than intended, he withdrew into himself, and faded from the poolside glen to somewhere distant, where he wrestled with awakened ghosts. He possessed the maddening ability to stretch out and be comfortable anywhere, from a beach to the tar-caked deck of a ship. His eyelids grew heavy and drooped, and his breath slowed. An infinitesimal sigh, and he was asleep.

Nathan’s head lolled toward her, his hair a spidery black tangle about his head and shoulders. The furrows between his brows smoothed and his lips parted slightly, blowing out gently with each breath.

The heat of the pool glowing inside like a small furnace, Cate fondled her new bracelet as she studied him, as she so often did. It was rare opportunity to see him near and so still. There was a time, not that long ago, when she had only seen him as the total man. Now he was the sum of dozens of little oddities and details: the small scar at his temple that ran up into his hairline; the clump of three bright copper hairs in his beard at the corner of his mouth, or the single silver one in his left brow. The hooks at the corner of his mustache, the ones she had seen lift the corners of his mouth into a smile so many times, were not a matter of trimming, but a natural phenomenon. Under his mustache, his mouth tended to curve downward from its sharply peaked center, giving him a certain somber sadness when at rest. At the moment, however, it drew up at the corners in a faint smile. His right hand rose and fell where it rested on his stomach. She could see again the severed ends of the last two fingertips, the nail corners nicked away.